Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin began painting the watercolor for the Russian folk tale “Go I know Not Whither” in 1917 and enjoyed it very much. The second wife of the artist Renée O’Connell posed as a model for the image of the marksman’s wife.

The fairy tale is about the beautiful Marya, who became the wife of a simple marksman and thereby angered the envious ruler. How he wanted to have such a beautiful woman as his wife, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen! So, the cunning tsar decided to destroy Andrey, and lure Marya into his nets. He sent the marksman to complete an impossible task, to go he did not know whither and bring back he did not know what. However, the stupid tsar did not know that Marya was a witch. She helped her husband in a difficult moment and told him what to do. As a result, they forced the tsar out of the kingdom, and they themselves lived in peace and prosperity until old age.

Like Alexandre Nikolayevich Benois, who kept his most successful drawings and watercolors in a special folder and would not part with them for anything, seeing them as his support, Bilibin also tried not to part with his “children”. However, back in 1920, fate turned against him.

A few years later, in Paris, Bilibin met that Greek buyer. Interestingly enough, the roles were changed. The former merchant was experiencing great financial difficulties. Fortunately, it turned out that even in difficult conditions, having sold almost his entire collection, the Greek carefully preserved Bilibin’s works. He agreed to return Bilibin’s “children” to the artist. Bilibin bought his works back, but his favorite watercolor was not among them.

Upon his return to his homeland, Bilibin found the “The Marksman’s Wife Before the Tsar and His Retinue” in his father’s room on Luzhnikovskaya Street. Yakov Bilibin had found the watercolor in a folder at a thrift store, where it was being sold among many other sheets.